Evolution

A new study has compared the diet of a variety of Australian megafaunal herbivores from the period when they were widespread (350,000 to 570,000 years ago) to a period when they were in decline (30,000 to 40,000 years ago) by studying their fossil teeth. The analysis suggests that climate change had a significant impact on their diets and may well have been a primary factor in their extinction. Read More

A laboratory study of four animal species and their microbiota finds that each species hosts a unique community of microbes that can significantly improve its health and fitness. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have discovered a novel model of evolution for factors that control gene expression. Read More

There is new evidence that the "mother’s curse" – the possibility that moms may transmit genes to their children that harm their sons but not their daughters – holds true in animals. Read More

New fossil evidence strengthens the proposition that the world’s first mass extinction was caused by ‘ecosystem engineers’ – newly evolved organisms that radically altered the environment. Read More

The first study that directly compares Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of a significant population of adults of European ancestry with their clinical records confirms that this archaic genetic legacy has a subtle but significant impact on modern human biology. Read More

The Earth's first mass extinction event 540 million years ago was caused not by a meteorite impact or volcanic super-eruption, but by the rise of early animals that dramatically changed to prehistoric environment. Read More

Recent microbiological research has shown that plants and animals, including humans, are not autonomous individuals but are holobionts: biomolecular networks that consist of visible hosts plus millions of invisible microbes. Read More

The evolutionary history of whales, sea turtles and other land animals that have returned to the sea details the radical changes to their life style, body shape, physiology that they made to survive in an aquatic environment. Read More

Vanderbilt students will give visitors a glimpse of Tennessee’s ancient past April 4 by guiding fossil hunts, identifying fossils and giving presentations and guided tours. Read More

By shifting evolution into reverse to produce an expensive HIV drug out of a simple sugar, Vanderbilt chemist Brian Bachmann has shown that it may be possible to manufacture exotic and expensive synthetic drugs as easily as brewing beer. Read More

Using computational tools to search for the genetic basis of what makes us human, Vanderbilt Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics Tony Capra and colleagues at the University of California-San Francisco have identified promising candidate regions. Read More

Tony Capra, Ph.D., is a new assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics and investigator in the Center for Human Genetics Research at Vanderbilt. His goal is to use the tools of computer science to address problems in genetics, evolution and biomedicine. Read More

A new study provides the first direct evidence that microbes can contribute to the origin of new species by reducing the viability of hybrids produced between males and females of different species. Read More

Vanderbilt phylogeneticists examined the reasons why large-scale tree-of-life studies are producing contradictory results and have proposed a suite of novel techniques to resolve the contradictions. Read More

Study maps the genetic changes involved in the domestication of Aspergillus oryzae, one of the fungi used to make sake, soy sauce and miso. Read More

Groundbreaking new research in the field of “evolutionary analysis in law” not only provides additional evidence that chimpanzees share the controversial human psychological trait known as the endowment effect – which in humans has implications for law – but also shows the effect can be turned on or off for single objects, depending on their immediate situational usefulness. Read More

By Roger Cone, chairman of the department of molecular physiology and biophysics at Vanderbilt, Jon Kaas, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt, and Robert Webster, Rose Marie Thomas Chair in Virology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital This opinion piece was published on the… Read More

Periodic cicadas, like those currently emerging in Middle Tennessee, play an important role in the local ecosystem. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers are exploring what role, if any, bacteria play in environmental diversity, with the aim of answering one of biology's most fundamental questions. Read More